Near Death Experience
by TheMacUnleashed
Summary: Dean has a discussion with Death over pizza. An AU version of 5.21.


As if the whole "Sam'll be jumping back to Hell with the devil stuffed inside of him like feathers in a pillow" thing isn't enough, Dean thinks as he goes to meet with Death, now he's always going to be associating pizza with chopping off some old dude's ring finger. This really sucks.

Of course, he remembers, he probably won't make it out of this encounter alive anyway -really, how many people go face-to-face with Death and live to tell about it? That's one good thing, then; at least he gets to keep his pizza sacred.

Perhaps it's illogical, but as he enters the dining room, which smells strongly of peppers, onions, sausage, and damn, he's hungry at what's possibly the most inconvenient moment of his life, he kind of expects to see the Grim Reaper sitting at one of the dozen or so tables. At the very least, he thinks that he'll be talking to something that resembles him: tall, scythe-bearing, black-robed and skeletal, or just skeleton.

Then again, he also expected War to be pissier than he was (turns out, he just wanted to be left alone and paint, or some crap like that; he only resorted to making people tear out others' throats which their hands when they got in his way) Famine to be older, or at least look it, and Pestilence to be saner, which is all sorts of screwy, given that he was a millennia-old horseman whose age alone probably earned him (possibly her, actually) the right to be kind of out of it. Which he/she definitely was.

Still, Death surprises him. For one thing, "he's" definitely a "she," and not a bad looking one either. For another, although she's dressed in all black, it's in a trendy, gothic, skinny-jeans sort of way, not like an old man in a bathrobe. At least, he's pretty sure that she's only wearing that one color; she isn't facing him, so it's sort of hard to tell.

That's assuming she _is_ Death, though, and not just some chick who had the unfortunate luck to wander in just then and be the only inhabitant of an otherwise empty pizzeria. He wonders if he should ask her who she is, or something, and then swears at himself, because appearances? They're not good things to trust. That tasty-looking hamburger might be carrying salmonella, and wow, if that's the first thing that comes to mind, then he's hungrier than he thought.

And of course, by now it's too late to go in for the ambush method. Death is standing, turning, facing him, and then wiping tomato sauce from her lips with a wrinkled napkin. Dean can see that his original assumption was right; the only thing she's wearing that breaks the monochromatic scheme is a silver necklace. It's an Egyptian symbol, one of the ones that's somehow slipped into mainstream culture. Thankfully, though, it's only got power if you use it in the right way, and like the pentagram, most of people wearing it don't know what the hell that is.

Granted, he doesn't know how to use that particular sigil -the ankh, he thinks it's called- either, and actually he isn't really sure what it does. Five bucks says that Death knows, though.

She smiles at him, and he can't help but be surprised by the whiteness of her teeth. He would've expected them to be rotted or, well, dead, but her dentist is apparently a hell of a lot better than his. "Hi, Dean."

"Are you Death?" he asks, and he knows that it's a stupid question, but he wants to make sure that she is before he tries to kill her.

Actually, scratch that plan. Death is probably kind of hard to kill. He wants to make sure that she's Death before he sits down and has a reasonable conversation with her about why Lucifer is a dick, and why he and Sam need her ring.

"That's me. And you're Dean Winchester. We've met before, but you don't remember that." She gestures to the empty seat across from her. "Sit down. The pizza here's really good."

He takes a seat, not because he wants to, but because it seems wise to abide by the philosophy that when Death asks you to do something, you do it. There's an untouched deep-dish pizza in front of him (topped with peppers, pepperoni, onions, and just about everything else besides anchovies and the kitchen sink) along with a set of clean silverware. He really is tempted to just dig in to it, but someone, he doesn't think that eating anything that a horseman (or horseperson, as the case apparently is) presents him with is a good idea,.

"I'm not trying to poison you, you know," she says lightly, cutting off another piece of her pizza.

"'Course you aren't. Well, as good as it smells, I didn't come here to sit around and eat pizza." Not that he'd mind altering his plans slightly -it wouldn't be too hard, given the lack of coherent tactics that he set out with in the first place- but still, there's just something about taking food from Death that seems like he's asking for trouble.

"Suit yourself, I guess. It is your favorite, though." She wipes her knife off with a napkin, leaving behind gooey strings of sauce-covered cheese. "I like it, too. That's one nice thing about being chained down here; I get to eat. Once a century really isn't enough for that."

"Right." He fingers his gun and wonders how to do this. Someone, it doesn't seem like Death will flinch with at the idea of a bullet to her head, but he isn't the sort of guy who does the quiet, reasonable conversation thing. "Look, I really didn't come here just to talk, or to -to eat pizza, or whatever-"

"I know. You came for the ring. And there's only one problem." She waggles her left hand under his eyes, pale and neatly manicured; she doesn't seem to have been digging any graces recently. "I don't have one."

No, she doesn't, something he probably should have realized in the first place. It's tempting to just stand up and say, Screw it all, and then walk out of here and back to Sammy and Castiel and come up with a different far-fetched plan, but that isn't going to work very well. The whole point of the end-of-the-line thing is that there _are_ no more plans to be thought of.

He came for a ring, and damn it, he is going to get one. "I'm pretty sure that you have to. Isn't that in the job description for a horseman?"

"Dean, we aren't horsemen." She sighs, sounding exasperated, like she's had this conversation a thousand and one times before, and she knows that she'll have to say it again. "A Prophet saw four of us, that one time -but that's not important. We aren't the way that the Bible makes us out -it didn't even get the names right, except for mine- but we are at the end of a leash that's in Lucifer's hands, three of my siblings and I. It's ancient magic, from before the Silver City was created, you know."

"The Silver City. Of course. Sounds like a nice place." He shifts in his chair, uncomfortable. This isn't anywhere near like how it went with the other three and it unsettles him, even though that kind of is his fault, for expecting anything these days to follow a set of rules, or even an almost indiscernible pattern.

"It is. Not exactly somewhere I visit very often, but it left a certain impression, on the few times that I did. It isn't the sort of place that you forget easily, not that I forget anything. But that isn't important. Lucifer bound three of my siblings and I to him, and it's wreaking havoc to the natural order. We didn't consent to this, Dean."

"Really?" Dean raises an eyebrow, reminds himself that this is Death, of course she's a liar. "Because I have to say, the other three seemed pretty happy before we came around and stole their magic rings."

"Appearances can deceive you. Except maybe for Desire -but it's sort of the exception. Not important, though. Lucifer bound us down, and he did use rings for the other three. Me, though..." she reaches up and strokes the silver necklace. "I like rings, sure, but he didn't happen to catch me with one on."

"The devil is binding you down with a necklace?" This strikes him as kind of bizarre, even though he knows it's actually a lot saner that most of the things he's dealt with in his life.

"It was either this or a hat," she says with a shrug and a smile, leaning forwards, like she's about to tell him an important secret. "Anyway, I can't take it off. He's forbidden me to, and I need to abide by his rules as long as I have it on. But he can't stop you from overcoming me in a fight, and he can't stop you from taking it."

"No, I guess he can't." This isn't right –it's too easy. "But I suppose he can't stop you from reaping me, can he?"

"I visit everyone, someday. Even Lucifer." She avoids the point of his question. "And I've already taken you before. But don't you think that if I had wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now?"

"How can I be expected to know anything about how you think?"

"Dean, we haven't got all day." Death sighs, and he gets the idea that she's starting to become impatient, and that he probably doesn't want to push her much further. "Lucifer has forced me to take hundreds of souls before their rightful time was up already. If you don't take the ankh now, you might not get another chance."

It doesn't make any sense –the nature of the horsemen is to destroy and to harm, to cause as much pain as is possibly, and then shower the devil with it- but then again, that he's brought on the apocalypse and prepared to do whatever the hell it takes to stop it is at least as wrong as Death's behavior, which probably shows how screwed up reality these days is.

He stands up and reaches over without speaking. She ducks her head forwards and lets him take hold of the silver chain upon which the pendent is attached to.

Dean balances it in the flat of his hand; it's heavier than it looks. "Thanks. I guess."

Death rises to her feet, pizza finished. "Don't fail, Dean."

"What happens if I do?" he asks, pocketing the ankh and preparing to depart from the restaurant.

"Seeing the future isn't my forte -that's Destiny. All I know is, if you don't pull this off, I'll be seeing you soon." Death pushes in her chair and glances at him, eyes dark and serious. "And I don't think that pizza will be involved."

She pauses, lets him accept her words -and that doesn't take long; he knows that she's just telling the truth- and then says, "So, want me to show you how the use the rings?"

"Okay." Come to think of it, he doesn't know how exactly to use the four charms. It probably wouldn't be good to have Lucifer in Sammy and not know how to open the prison.

She shows him, using the forks and knives on the table as an example (because no, he isn't going to part with the rings; as helpful as she's been so far, it still doesn't seem smart to trust Death in a life-or-death situation. She's probably kind of biased) and it's actually really simple, especially in comparison to everything else that he has to do.

"What do you do now?" he asks, ready to leave the restaurant behind -he's been ready ever since he walked in, but that isn't important.

"I wait for you guys to win. I'm not really free yet -the necklace was working as sort of a collar, but I'm still fenced in- but I doubt that Lucifer's going to be paying much attention to any of his underlings in the next few days. Not with the mayhem you and your brother are going to be causing." She grins fiercely. "We'll be watching out for you, Dean, my siblings and I. Give 'em Hell."

"I'll do my best." He nods at her -no use saying goodbye; he's probably going to be seeing her real soon anyway- and then finally leaves the pizza place, reunites with Crowley, and gets something to eat, because as well as the talk with Death went, pizza has somehow lost its appeal now. 


End file.
